


The ones they left behind

by NammiKisulora



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Angst, BoFA spoilers, During BOFA, Flashbacks, Gen, I didn't like the way Jackson handled it though, Post-BOFA, You all know what happens, but it's still a movie fanfic though, like no Azog, so I'm kind of ignoring all movie canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-03-01 12:02:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2772305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NammiKisulora/pseuds/NammiKisulora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Battle of Five Armies, it falls on Dwalin to go back to Ered Luin to tell Dís of her sons' and brother's fate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The ones they left behind

He dreams about them after the battle. Every night, they come back to haunt his dreams, their dead, broken eyes staring at him, silently accusing. Why didn't you save us? they ask. Why didn't you protect us?

"I tried!" he tries to scream, but the words turn to ash in his mouth and his tongue seems to stick in his mouth, thick and unwieldy. "I would have died for you, had I only the chance!"

But his pleas do not move the dead, and his king and the young princes only look at him, silent and sad, their blame never spoken but piercing nonetheless.

He usually wakes screaming.

*

"Dwalin." Lady Dís inclines her head, but her eyes never leave his face. They are the same colour as Thorin's were, a stormy blue, but all the warmth they used to hold is gone. "Rise."

"My lady." He rises from his kneeling position with a bow and awaits further commands.

"Tell me of the battle." Her voice is steady, and only a slight strain in it betrays her grief. "Tell me how my sons died." He opens his mouth and begins to speak.

"They - " he says, and falters. How can he make her understand? And if he can, how would it help her? She is a mother without children, a sister without brothers, because that accursed Mountain stole them all. "They were brave, my lady. The bravest lads I ever saw." She purses her lips to keep them from trembling, but motions for him to go on.

Dwalin takes a deep breath and launches into the tale.

 

_The barricade falls with a deafening noise, and Thorin leads the company straight into the thick of battle. Dwalin brandishes his axes and tries to keep Thorin in his field of vision, looking for the flash of his king's golden armour and making sure to stay close. The princes fight close to the king, his little Fíli and Kíli who only yesterday fought with wooden toy swords in the yard, while he and Thorin worked in the smithy with Dís managing the shop._

_Soon the company is forced apart from the never-ending onslaught of orcs, and from the scattered glimpses Dwalin remembers from the majority of the battle, he fights back to back with both hardy dwarves from the Iron Hills and tall, slender elves in the livery of Mirkwood soldiers._

_He doesn't know how long he's fought by the time he finds Fíli and Kíli again. Somehow they have managed to stay relatively close together, and even though Fíli is bleeding from a nasty cut above the eye and half of Kíli's face is soaked with blood, they grin when they see him._

_"Dwalin!" they shout in unison, and relief floods him. The lads are alright, they're holding their own against the orcs, staying close together, just like he's taught them._

_"Thorin?" he shouts back, and Fíli motions behind him with one of his twin swords. Dwalin buries Keeper in an orc's skull and looks over to where the prince pointed, and what he sees makes his heart drop into his stomach. Thorin is somehow still on his feet, but he's stumbling, with two arrows is sticking out his chest. Even from afar, Dwalin can see that his tunic is wet with blood._

 

"I only looked away for a second", he whispers. "A second, that's all it took. When I looked back to them, I - Fíli -" He swallows, a lump in his throat choking the words. Dís' cheeks are wet with tears, and her eyes resemble a stormy sky, filled with endless grief and despair. Yet she doesn't make a sound. Dwalin blinks to relieve the burning in his eyes. "I'm sorry", he croaks, voice cracking. "I'm so sorry I couldn't save them."

 

 _Kíli screams as the warg pounces his brother, throwing him to the ground._ Fíli! FÍLI! _Dwalin knows he's too far away, but he's sure he hears Fíli's ribs cracking as the warg puts its giant paws on his chests to reach his throat and -_

_"NOOO!" Kíli buries his sword in the warg's head the moment its jaws close around Fíli's throat, but Dwalin knows it's too late. Still, he races towards them, Thorin momentarily forgotten. Kíli pulls his brother's body out from under the warg, shaking him and screaming; screaming at Fíli to wake UP, to stop pretending, to MOVE, oblivious of the battle raging all around him._

_Dwalin sees what is about to happen a moment or two before it does. He disposes of the enemies in front of him without thinking, his eyes and mind never leaving the princes, closer now, but still too far away. A mounted orc wielding a heavy, spiked mace comes up behind Kíli, and Dwalin doubts the lad even hears his warning shout._

_The mace crashes into the back of his head, and his grief-twisted expression turns into one of surprise and puzzlement. His mouth forms a confused O for a moment before he limply collapses over his brother's corpse._

 

Lady Dís' closes her eyes and Dwalin stops speaking, waiting for a hint to continue.

"Leave", she says without opening her eyes. Dwalin bows.

"My lady -"

"Go." He goes.

That night he dreams of Thorin and the end of the battle.

 

_The battle fades for a moment, and all he sees are the bodies the princes, bleeding and broken on the ground._

_"Fíli!" he shouts. "KÍLI!" But neither of them stir, and a sharp pain in his shoulder snaps Dwalin back to reality. Looking down, he discovers an arrow sticking out of it, and his left arm hangs limply down his side, his grip on Grasper slipping. As he drops the axe, he sees Thorin again. The king is on his knees, desperately holding off a great, ugly orc that seems intent on bashing his skull in. "THORIN!" Dwalin makes a split-second decision to leave Grasper where she lies, silently vowing to come back and find her when the battle is over, hefts Keeper in his good hand and begins to fight his way towards his king._

_He reaches him just as the orc breaks through Thorin's exhausted defences, and by some miracle he sinks Keeper into its neck the moment before its spiked club sinks into Thorin's head. Instead it lands heavily on his shoulder, and Thorin and the orc go down together. Dwalin tears his axe free to plant it in the forehead of a charging warg before dropping to his knees beside his king, gently turning him over._

_"Thorin?" Thorin's eyelids flutter and he groans quietly; he's alive! But there is so much blood, too much, and Dwalin knows that -_

_"The eagles! The eagles are coming!" a thousand voices suddenly shout._

_And so they do._

 

"He died some hours later", Dwalin tells Dís the next day. "He'd lost too much blood, and Óin said a broken rib had pierced his lung. He asked for the lads first thing when he woke, and - and..." He chokes, and can barely get the next words out. "I think he wanted to die after we told him." Dís' eyes flash.

"Good." Dwalin takes an involuntary step back at the harshness of her tone, and she inhales sharply, seeming to realise what she just said. "I - I didn't mean -" She squeezes her eyes shut, breath shaking.

"He never meant for this to happen, my lady. He only ever wanted the best for them, you know that, too."

"How were they buried, Dwalin?" she breathes, voice contorted with pain. "Please tell me they buried them together. Please..."

"Aye."

 

 _The funeral is splendid, with all the pomp and ceremony fit for royalty. Thorin is laid in an ornately carved granite tomb, elaborate patterns decorating its sides, and above his head the words "_ Here lies Thorin, son of Thráin, King under the Mountain, Reclaimer of Erebor and Leader of the Fourteen _" are etched into a great marble slab._

_Before the lid of the tomb, adorned with his likeness, is closed, Bard places the Arkenstone on Thorin's chest with the words: "There let it lie till the Mountain falls! May it bring good fortune to all his folk that dwell here after!" And in the hands of the stone carving, Thranduil places Orcrist with murmured words of it being a token of the bond of peace and friendship between their people._

_Not until then any attention is paid to the princes. Their tomb is a shared one, placed to the right of Thorin's, as befits his heirs. Their wounds are cleaned, and they are almost all that betray the fact that the princes are not merely sleeping - almost, except that neither of them ever were so pale and still in life._

_They lie on their backs, with their hands loosely intertwined and facing each other, their foreheads almost touching. In death, they look even younger than they were. "_ Here lies Fíli, heir of Thorin, King under the Mountain, and Kíli, his brother. They fell defending their home and family _" their inscription says._

 

"They will rest together till the world is reforged and they are born anew, my lady. How could we have parted them? They belong together."

"Thank you." Dís looks at him, for the first time for what seems like hours. "Thank you, Dwalin. Now leave me."

"My lady." He bows and turns to leave the hall.

*

He never stops dreaming about them. As the years pass, the dreams become rarer, but they never stop. After a while, they change, too; sometimes he can even dream of them as they were, before - before the quest, before the battle.

It never stops hurting, though. Dwalin puts his axes away, refuses to fight anymore. He turns down a position as captain of Dain's royal guard; his days as an axeman are done.

He pulls back from the social life of Erebor, and spends most of his days alone in his chambers, remembering. Sometimes he visits the tombs, too. Talks to them a bit. Berating himself for doing such a silly thing, but it comforts him.

The good dreams usually come the nights afterwards.

Yet sometimes, he still wakes screaming.

**Author's Note:**

> Pretty please tell me what you thought!


End file.
